Blind People Have Problems With Computers

A large number of people with poor sight use computers. It may surprise some, but there are also completely blind users. The RNIB has over 250 volunteers in the UK who help blind users sort out problems like upgrades, installing software and more.

Would you like to help?

The RNIB computer volunteers are at www.rnib.org.uk/youhelp/cvol.htm

How can people who can’t see use PCs?
Well, you can talk to a PC as well as use the keyboard and mouse and you can listen to it as well as watch the box. You can get a scanner to read text as text, rather than scan it as a picture. Then the text can be imported into a Word or other document. Finally, you can have the text on screen read back – in a U.S. accent - never mind!
This all sounds great. It is, but getting it done smoothly and accurately is something else! This is where your help is needed.
Text readers and OCR Software
Blind people can buy text readers, these are EXPENSIVE, but with them you can hear books and magazines being read.
Cicero from Dolphin costs £245
Openbook Ruby from Freedom Scientific £675
Kurzweil 1000 £675

OCR software often comes bundled with scanners. It recognises text – sometimes! Editable text can then be scanned directly into a Word document. Omnipage and Textbridge are such packages. Once text is in Word it can be read out by other software such as ReadBack or ReadPlease. The PC can be told what to do by voice commands using software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking. A lot of the software can be had for free and even where it costs, it is still cheaper than any text reader. But – there are problems! Problem 1 is that RNIB volunteers don’t have all the software that is out there: for instance, I’ve never seen any of the text readers. I’ve used Textbridge Classic, which is useless, but I’ve not got Textbridge Pro and so on. Problem 2 is that sighted volunteers have to try to see things from an unsighted person’s point of view – that’s not easy! The rest of the problems seem to be problem 3:

Oh no! - ‘The Mouse’
If you can’t see, you can still find your way round the keyboard but you can’t guide the mouse. All Mouse movements have to be eliminated for a blind user. Keyboard short cuts, or Macros can deal with some commands. So far, I haven’t been able to travel from switching on the PC through scanning a page, switching off proof reading, getting the text into Word and then having it read back WITHOUT some use of the Mouse.

Do you know of a cheap combination of scanner, OCR software and screen reader that will convert magazine text to speech - but - no mouse?

E-Access Bulletin
An email newsletter on technology issues for people with visual impairment and blindness

HOW TO RECEIVE THE BULLETIN
To subscribe to this free monthly bulletin, e-mail eab-subs@headstar.com with 'subscribe eab' in the subject header.

The latest issue contains information about Microsoft Agent, voice recognition tool 'Agent Powertoy' this is being used by
The Caithness Community Web Site http://www.caithness.org http://members.theglobe.com/costas5/windows_05.htm)


E-Access Bulletin web site http://www.e-accessibility.com

Sponsored by the Royal National Institute for the Blind http://www.rnib.org.uk
The National Library for the Blind http://www.nlbuk.org
Guide Dogs for the Blind Association http://www.guidedogs.org.uk